The placebo effect a proven cure

The placebo effect a proven cure

Friday, December 25, 2009

The researchers succeeded in psoriasis patients (psoriasis is a chronic skin disease) successfully treated, while only one quarter to half the usual dose of steroid medication were normal. The patients received a placebo drug that only partially contained the usual medication. To the researchers want to demonstrate that the placebo effect in medicine can be used.

By designing a treatment method that consists partly true and partly a placebo medication, the researchers hope to optimize the benefits of drugs, side to reduce the number of people take their medicine to increase, and the risk of drug toxicity or to reduce. Moreover, the use of only one part of the normal dose of medication with the same effect a reduction in healthcare costs could bring.

This research is a product of decades of study in the emerging scientific field "euro psycho immunology. This area assumes that the human immune system closely related to the human spirit. Thoughts and moods are the result of neurochemicals that make hormones are released in the body which in turn communicate with disease cells.

Although placebos (neppillen) which in themselves have no effect as medicine even today still regularly prescribed by doctors, they have a negative reputation in medicine. It's like a pill with no medication is not real, some magic, some deception.

The study, however, recognizes the effect of a placebo. The effect is similar to the Pavlovian response, ie the conditioned response. The nineteenth century physiologist Pavlov was the first who studied the phenomenon of conditioning. He had always heard a bell when he went to give food to dogs. Over time the dogs have started to make saliva when he had only heard the bell and while the food was not distributed. The bell is a conditioned stimulus, the food is an unconditioned stimulus. That the dog saliva when they did create alone heard the bell is a conditioned response.

In the study the researchers wanted to study whether a therapeutic effect of drugs could be generated by certain associations with the drug, such as shape, color, smell and packaging of the drugs, and the fact that the drug was distributed by an authoritarian person in one laboratory. These repeated associations caused by conditioned responses, according to the researchers, a therapeutic effect had been caused not only by the available drugs, but also by the stimuli associated with the effects of those drugs.

The researchers chose to study their patients with the disease psoriasis. During the study, patients were given doses of medication that normally would be enough. The rest of the dose was supplemented with a placebo. The results show that the placebo effect really helps.

It should be mentioned that this treatment method does not work with people who are unconscious. Even when it comes to substances that the body is unable to make itself the method of treatment is not working. The treatment method because it is assumed that the body under the influence of the placebo generated by the body's neurochemicals will create antibodies.

Although results are new and further examination, the scientists believe that the medical response of the human mind must recognize as an important part of many of the drug effects and want them to use them. The pharmaceutical industry may choose the psychological impact of drug intake to ignore. On the other hand, they can also choose to try to exploit the effect. This treatment method is safer for the body and the production will be lower. Source: Science Daily

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